How to Cook a 5-Star Meal With Bodega Ingredients

If you live in New York City, you know the life and times and your local bodega all too well. It definitely ain't a grocery store, but it's definitely more than a "convenience store." Each individual bodega has as many funky and distinct products as there are funky and distinct characters—yourself included. It becomes a crucial mooring point for your life: The place you'll score that early-morning bacon-egg-and-cheese; a sandwich and chips for lunch; a late-night snack; or all three, at the same time, at any point in your day (or night).

These places usually come to define not just the character of your neighborhood in some way, but also, your experience in it. Part of their charm is that they do not try to be all things to all people. For example, they definitely lack for the kinds of ingredients you'd find refined chefs shopping for on a regular basis—until now.

Recently, while roaming the aisles of our local bodega, we started wondering: Is it possible for some of New York City's great chefs to whip up meals for the tired, the maybe-broke, and the definitely-hungry masses, using only ingredients culled from a bodega?

For the answer, we looked to Sandy Dee Hall, chef and co-owner of New York City's farm-to-table bar and restaurant duo Black Tree NYC, with locations on the Lower East Side and in Williamsburg. Black Tree's the kind of place that churns out ingenious meals on the regular, a spot where you can drop-in and grab a quick, stellar sandwich as easily as you can sit at a chef's counter for a sharp, brilliant prix-fixe. And Sandy, the man behind it, is definitely the kind of chef who could take on this challenge.

For one thing, he didn't start cooking professionally until two months before he opened up Black Tree. He learned, like most of us, on the fly. The other reason: At Black Tree, everything's seasonal, and usually the menu's dictated by whatever ingredients Sandy's found to be the best that particular week—often, his menus are limited to dishes from one animal, from one farm, and you get to see what magic gets cooked up. While these self-imposed limitations make for an amazing dining experience, they also fitting for our first-ever Five-Star Bodega Challenge: Could Sandy shop a single bodega, with a $25 budget, and rock an entirely edible three-course meal for two people, cookable by even the brokest college student in the grimiest of dorms?

He was going give it a shot, knowing well what he was up against. "When I was in college—at Villa-no-fun—I mostly ordered takeout," he laughed. "When I didn't, it was lots of eggs and bacon. One pan, you throw it all in there, and it gets done." As for amateur bodega-shopping cooks, he had some sage wisdom before he got started:

"You need good ideas, and execution is something you can always work on," Hall explained. "As long as you know the end result you're trying to get to is going to be good, it all becomes about practice after that. It's like that Disney movie Ratatouille," he laughed. "Anyone actually can cook." To see how he did it, as well as how his dishes came out, check the footage above.

And finally, two tips on cooking up these recipes:

1. On shopping: "If you're going to splurge on anything, go big on whatever meat you want to add, or whatever dairy. That's the key to all of this, and if your bodega has bottom-shelf or top-shelf stuff, and you can afford top-shelf, here's where you do it.”

2. On where to shop: "A great bodega is just a mixture of grit, charm, and random cats. Everything else you need, they'll have."

Appetizer

Image via First We Feast Original

“B.S.C.B.D." (a.k.a., “A big stupid 'chili' bean dip")

Gear:

Can opener

A burner, a hot plate, something you can heat a pot on

A pot

Something to stir it up with

Oven or a microwave (optional)

Ingredients:

Black beans, one can

Kidney beans, one can

Cheddar cheese, 1/4th pound

Chips (player's choice—as many as your heart desires/you can afford)

Chef Boyardee's Beef-a-Roni, one can

Salt, a pinch or two

Black pepper, a pinch or two

Optional ingredients for dope tweaks, if you got 'em:

Aleppo pepper flakes, a pinch or two*

Sour cream, a tablespoon

Cream cheese, a tablespoon

*If you don't have Aleppo Pepper in your spice rack, you can also use crushed red pepper, or chili powder, or even some cayenne, but just don't overdo it, you know? Season to taste, bruh.

Preparation:

1. Open the two cans of beans and the Boyardee. Dump that into a pot. Make sure it all fits, dummy. Fire up the pot on medium-high heat, and get them cooking to a low bubbling, for about fifteen minutes. Adjust the heat so it's not going nuts—you want 'em cooking but not, like, exploding in your kitchen.

2. As that stuff is cooking, take about two-thirds of that cheddar cheese, and stir it in there—a few pieces at a time—so they melt into the mix. And if you've got sour cream and cream cheese, throw in a tablespoon of those for a creamier consistency.

3. Take it off the burner once all that cheese is melted in and it's got a melty, only-kinda-but-not-too-chunky consistency. Let it cool off. Season it to taste with the salt, pepper, and Aleppo flakes. That Atomic Red Boyardee sauce is gonna be on the sweet side. If you want the heat, now's the time to bring it.

4. If you're super hungry, you can top it with the rest of the cheddar cheese, and eat it right then and there. But good things come to people who can chill for a second. The real way you want to do this: Cover it with some foil, and get it in the fridge. Get it cold as soon as you can. Once it solidifies, you can reheat it by throwing it in a 400°F oven for five to seven minutes. Once it's at that perfect level of heat—warm enough to eat, with some solid layering on top—that's when you hit it with the rest of your cheddar cheese on top.

5. Serve with chips. Go on, get nasty.

Entrée

Image via First We Feast Original

Dish: Improv Mazeman

Gear:

Can opener

A burner, a hot plate, something you can heat a pot on

A pot

Something to stir it up with

Ingredients:

Instant ramen, four packs (whatever flavors you're down with)

Onions, one small bag

Bacon, one small package

Eggs, four (optional)

Six cups of water

Butter ("like, a few tablespoons")

Gear:

A burner, a hot plate, something you can heat a pot on

A 12 or 14-inch frying pan, or a big pot

Something to stir it up with

A colander or strainer

Preparation: "For this, instead of simply using water, we're going to make a dashi—a one-ingredient stock—using onions, to give your average bowl of ramen some kick," says Sandy.

1. You're going to take that bacon, cut it up into inch-sized pieces. Throw them in a pot on medium-high heat. Let that cook and sear. Mix 'em around to make sure they're all getting cooked.

2. While that's happening, peel and cut all those in onions in half. Throw them cut-half down into the pan with the bacon, and let them brown, almost to the point where they're charred/black. You might want to disable that smoke detector for the moment—it's going to get smoky. That char will give that soup a little body.

3. When that bacon is crispy and the onions charred, carefully dump some room temperature water on top, enough to completely submerge the onions and the bacon. Let it cook for fifteen minutes. Keep the heat high enough so you've got a rolling boil.

4. Now you've got your stock. Strain it with the colander, set the bacon and onions aside separately, and throw the liquid back in the pot. Get it bubbling, and then, get those ramen noodles. Set the flavor packets aside, and cook the noodles in your stock for two or three minutes. Once it's cooked, ladle the noodles and the stock into bowls.

5. Take that same pot or pan. Throw a tablespoon or two of butter in it. Reheat your bacon, and fry an egg. While your egg is frying and your bacon is reheating, carve a few rings out of the charred onion as a garnish to the ramen. Top each bowl of ramen off with the bacon, the egg, and a slice of onion on top of the egg for an edible garnish and texture. Dig in.

Dessert

Image via First We Feast Original

Dish: Ice Cream Damnwich

Sandy says: "This is a dope way to make a souped-up treat super-easily, and ahead of time. No excuses."

Gear:

A freezer, or a really cold fridge

Ingredients:

Oatmeal cream pies (or your bodega cookie of choice), four cookies

Single serving ice cream (your flavor of choice), four cups

Cereal, a few handfuls;Fruity Pebbles are especially dope for this

Chocolate bars or candy bags, one or two bars/packs; you're going to be freezing these candy, so try not to go with anything that'll break your teeth

Preparation:

1. Take your chocolate bar or your candies, and chop them up into little pieces.

2. Lots of bodegas, especially in New York, have really cheap ice cream by the pint. You can mix flavors, or go with just one. Dump it out into a bowl, let it melt for a minute or two until it's slightly mushy. Then, mix it together with your chopped up candy, folding the bits into the ice cream.

3. Take your ice cream and stuff it between your sandwiching materials. Boom, you have an ice cream sandwich. Throw the sandwich back in the freezer. Get it nice and cold and frozen. It's now ready ahead-of-time.

4. When you're ready to eat it, take your sandwiches out of the freezer, and let it sit at room temperature for a minute or two, until they're still hard but with slightly soft edges.

5. While this happens, take some cereal—either from a single-serving, or stolen from a college cafeteria, whatever—put it in a bowl, and then crush it up into something slightly more coarse than a powder. Use your hands.

6. Now take your sandwich, and lustily drag the exterior of it through the bowl of crushed cereal. You've got a crust.

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